Jeff Bezos is going to space.Day 1: Countdown

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At that time, we were talking about theoretical Blue Origin ticket holders, who would pay about $250,000 to become space tourists. I did not expect Bezos himself to be on the first flight. And, I suspect, neither does he. But this is the situation in the summer of 2021. The world is still in the throes of a pandemic, climate change is threatening most parts of the planet, and we are watching the world’s richest people flee the planet for 11 minutes. Just over a week ago, Richard Branson, another billionaire owner of the space company, Floating on his own rocket ship, Teaches children all over the world that they should draw inspiration from his feats and open the champagne cork when he returns.

Bezos might say that escape from the earth is the point. Because although Blue Origin will enthusiastically launch its space tourism business tomorrow, Bezos has always emphasized that his long-term goal is much more than removing “astronauts” from the bucket list of wealthy customers. He believes The destiny of mankind will guide us to vast space colonies and ultimately support one trillion people. In the short term, especially considering the intensifying competition between Bezos and Branson, I wonder if this information will be lost, as civilian space travel has become synonymous with the ability to pay or win the favor of power brokers.

I am writing this From the rural town of Van Horn in western Texas, according to the road signs on Interstate 10, there are 2,500 souls here. This is the third time I have come to this desert town, because everyone said that this will be a historic launch, and its capacity has exceeded its limited capacity. The last time I came here, I watched the launch of Blue Origin (although the only passenger in it was a test dummy named Mannequin Skywalker), so the box was checked on my own bucket list. I think history is what attracted me here, although I admit that it is difficult to prove what makes it an important milestone, rather than a data point in the future timeline.

Actual flight, in terms of technical achievements, has no breakthrough. Alan Shepard’s first human suborbital trip in 1961 was a consolation prize in itself, because the Russians had already put astronauts into orbit twice. Branson has become the first billionaire space tycoon to ride his own spacecraft.Elon Musk’s private SpaceX company now Routine Dispatch astronauts To orbit International Space Station. Like SpaceX, Blue’s rockets usually return to Earth unharmed.

However, you can smell something different here, which is not necessarily touted by the Blue Origins. At the press conference on Sunday, Blue Origin officials have been talking about all the first time. The most striking, and certainly the answer to a great trivia in the future, is that this flight will include the oldest and youngest people going to space. Except for Bezos and his brother Mark- Instagram posts Showcasing older siblings providing suborbital advice, bachelor girl style-staff includes Wally Funk, an invited guest who has been trained for Project Mercury and will be the oldest person in space travel , And paying customer Oliver Dimon, he will become the youngest. The executives also claimed that they were the first commercial company to send paying customers into space. This is a subtle difference, because a company called Space Ventures has been arranging the path to the ultimate frontier at very high fees for many years. One of its clients, Former Microsoft Scientist Charles Simeone, And even has the honor of being the first billionaire in space, twice aboard the spacecraft of the Russian Space Agency. (Sorry, Branson.)



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